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With All My Ability

With all my ability I have… 1 Chronicles 29:2

Best Effort

As I thought about this, the more and more powerful this verse became for my life.

The phrase “with all my ability” doesn’t demand perfection, because none of us can be perfect, but it does demand our best effort.

This changes our outlook from the end result, to our daily, moment by moment, striving to achieve our goals.

I find this both freeing and challenging.

“How To”

As I started to think about it, a library hold became available: Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts; Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith.

The book gave me some “how to” ideas to apply the best of my ability to specific goals in my life.

Goldsmith said each of us are Planners (our goals) and Doers (our actions), but that we often are better planners than doers. What we need, he said, was a coach to help the Planner become better at Doing. One tool is to develop daily questions to ask ourselves to what extent we did our best to…

Did I do my best to do, this day, what I know I should have done?

In his model it looks like this:

PLAN

What is the goal I want to achieve?

What is the associated question, for example, “Did I do my best to…”

COACH

Monitor yourself

Assess your effort

Keep score

DO

Stick with it

Improve your skill over time

You’re the Coach

The Coaching element helps us identify issues that we need to address in order to do our best, and, over time improves our skill in DOING what we need to do to reach our goal.

You have to come up with your own goals and Daily Questions, but here are some examples:

Did I do my best to read and study the Bible?

Did I do my best to have a meaningful prayer time?

Did I do my best to exercise according to my plan?

Did I do my best to stick to my diet?

Or, if it more powerful for you, word the questions in the negative:

Did I do my best not to eat sugar?

Did I do my best not to waste time?

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I am applying this to my life, and can sense that this discipline will help me achieve my goals. Do you think it might work for you?

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